Gun Shy
by Mugenko
Summary: The team takes on a strange case of a girl found collapsed outside of an office building. As they learn more about the unidentifiable affliction she has, they find themselves being dragged into a dark history spanning centuries. Noir/House crossover.
1. Long, Thin Scar

Disclaimer: I don't even own my car. Enough said.

A/N: This will be my first fanfiction in a long, long time. I have written before under a long lost pen name, but I'm going to let the dead sleep peacefully.

Gun Shy

By Rahuran

Chapter One:

Long, Thin Scar

All was quiet. Bathed in the light of the full moon, the large room gave off a tranquil ambience. The tall glass barriers allowed for a decent view of the New Jersey night life. The room was furnished with a large glass desk and a few cozy looking office chairs. A healthy Ficus stood in the corner of the room, adding a touch of life to what would otherwise be a dead room.

The serenity was disturbed at the sound of slow, cautious footsteps as they neared the wooden door to the office. A peace-shattering slam resounded as the door was violently kicked in by a man wearing semi-casual clothes, the most distinct of which being a bright orange vest. Wielding a high caliber handgun, he slowly entered the room, eyes darting around, inspecting every corner of darkness for his target.

From up above, a shadowy figure descended and caught his head, and in one swift motion, spun it around. One sickening crack later, the rough looking man in the orange sweater collapsed dead on the floor.

The small figure then dropped as well, revealed in the moonlight to be a very young woman of Asian descent. She turned around and silently exited the room, continuing her hunt for another man.

-

Marco Dauterive bolted out of the emergency exit doors of the three story office building, tripping the fire alarm in the process. He was counting on the alarm to spook his pursuer and allow him a chance to escape. The silenced gunshot embedding itself into the brick wall a few inches from where his head just was, told him the hunter was very much unafraid. Marco silently thanked his athletic tendencies and turned a corner, trying to put more distance and obstacles between him and the predator at his heels.

After a few minutes, the sound of footsteps from behind had faded, and he appeared to have lost whoever it was that was shooting at him. Marco continued his flight just to be on the safe side, quickly pulling out his cell and calling for a cab to meet him a few streets ahead.

The Asian girl had barely missed her target. In her haste to find the man, she had miscalculated just enough to throw off her usual accuracy. The man was clearly used to running, otherwise he would have been dead long ago. As she moved to continue the chase, all the feeling in her legs disappeared mid-stride. Though years of training would have allowed her to correct her balance, she found herself unable to even move the limbs, let alone stabilize herself. Consequently, the flailing of her upper body forced her to fall backwards into the wall of the office building. Her Beretta flew out of her grasp, landing in a nearby empty dumpster. As the young woman's head introduced itself to the concrete, darkness conquered her vision.

-

Cue House, M.D. opening

-

"Well how about this one?" Cameron pulled a vanilla folder from the pile she had been examining. The diagnostics team had been going through medical cases of the patients most recently brought in. "Forty-three-year-old man, suffering from fever, facial pain, cough-"

"No."

"House, you've turned down ten patients. Mysterious cases aren't going to fall out of the sky just because you're bored." Foreman scolded House. The man was driven by puzzles. They had nothing interesting to show him. The master diagnostician must have been really annoyed.

"I beg to differ." He threw down the folder he had been holding in his hand onto the conference table.

Chase was the first to take up the file and begin reading.

"You had a case picked out already?" Cameron shook her head and raised her voice a level. "Why didn't you just tell us?"

House looked between them, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "It's 7:00 AM. A healthy dose of frustration should supplement your coffee."

Foreman buried his forehead in his left hand, sighing in annoyance. He lifted his mug to his mouth, allowing the liquid energy in. Cameron rolled her eyes and took a sip of her own coffee. Chase looked utterly confused.

"I don't get it. What's so special about this case?" He passed it to Foreman who took it and read the information aloud.

"Sixteen to nineteen-year-old girl, unconscious with a possible concussion…that's it?" Foreman gave House an incredulous look.

"As far as we know, that's all." House twirled his cane in his hand a few times.

"So you just want a simple case today? Is that the deal? You want to take a break?" Cameron quietly hoped this was true, but a nagging feeling in the back of her head told her otherwise.

"It only _appears _simple. She was found unconscious outside of a three-story office building late last night when the firemen arrived."

"So what's unusual about that? She could've passed out from a combination of smoke inhalation and banging her head trying to get out." Foreman was skeptical of House's decision. Why would he take such a commonplace case like this?

They all got a clue when he tossed today's newspaper on the table. The boldfaced headlines were plain as day. 'Gunman found dead in office building.' Further reading elaborated on the story of a middle-aged man found lying on the floor with his neck snapped. He was discovered in the middle of the night during the fire department's sweep of the building. The man had a gun gripped tightly in his hand.

"There wasn't a fire. It was a false alarm. Which means something _awesome_ was going on." House rubbed his hands together excitedly for emphasis.

"You watch too many action movies." Chase got up to refill his mug. Clearly they were going to need a lot more caffeine.

"Oh come on. Let's just go take look!" House imitated a child in a toy store.

"Fine, it will give us something to do at least." Cameron got up from her seat and left for the room indicated on the file. At the very least, they could satiate his appetite for strange patients as soon as they figured her out to be an innocent bystander who was probably knocked out by the escaping assailant.

-

The brunette doctor walked into the room of the passed out Asian teenager. Reading the information at the foot of her bed, she found the girl had yet to be identified. She approached the side of the bed to give a brief examination. Something about the girl caught her eye. Cameron leaned down and lifted teen's chin slightly, tracing her hand along the area connecting her head to her neck.

"Are you a closet somnophile?" House teased, standing in the doorway.

"Come here. Look at this." House curiously approached, directing his attention to where his minion's hand was touching.

As Foreman and Chase entered behind him, House smiled. "Well gang, it looks like we've got another mystery on our hands."

Along the circumference of her neck, as if tracing the joining of her head, the girl had a long, thin scar.

-

A/N: This is very fun to write so far. I am pleased with the results *smiles evily*.

Some careful attention will show that Noir takes place sometime in 2010. I have no idea when House takes place, but as I don't care to dabble in the details of timelines, I'm just setting the story sometime after the manor incident in Noir, and before House gets his new team in his respective show.

Bear with me on the medical jargon. I'm not terribly familiar with writing explicit details the likes of House's heated medical debates with all the big words and symptoms and whatnot. If I do include a whole lot of that, it will either be dumbed down or implied.

Kirika's only form of indentification is written in Japanese, so it would make sense that they couldn't pull the information from her student I.D. card. Alluding to her unknown identity, I opted not to use her name this entire chapter, but don't worry it will come up soon. As for Mireille's whereabouts, that will come into play soon as well.

Marco Dauterive is an OC of my creation. He is named after the DiMera family's hired gun on Days of our Lives, as well is Bill Dauterive from King of the Hill.

Expect updates to come sporadically, but I will try to update when I have the time or am otherwise procrastinating.

Thank you for reading and please, review!


	2. That One Disease

And I mean **sporadically**. One year later, I'm gonna add another chapter. I can't promise anything consistent, mostly due to my attention span, but I'm bored so, here we go!

* * *

Chapter 2:

That One Disease

"It was caused by a garrote." The bunny-ears doctor announced that with a hint of glee in his voice. After studying the scar for a fair amount of time, this was the conclusion.

"You can't be serious? She's a teenager." Cameron, always looking on the bright side, found it rather hard to believe that such a young girl could possibly have been strangled in such a brutal manner for any reason.

"A Japanese teenager at that! You know how crazy that place is. Maybe it's some kind of weird fetish over there," House retorted with sarcasm.

The woman gave up trying to reason with him. Obviously anything she said was just going to be shot back at her with that obnoxious wit. Foreman didn't give in.

"Being Japanese doesn't automatically make someone an asphyxiophiliac. You're sure it wasn't a surgery? Even a half-assed one?"

"It shows all the telltale signs of wire strangulation. Whoever did this to her was going for the kill. How she survived is anyone's guess. Maybe she's like the James Bond of of Japan or something."

Backing off of his investigation of the scar, House returned to an upright position, a thought occurring to him. "She got a name? Seems a little inappropriate to call a Japanese girl Jane Doe."

Foreman passed him the only possible source of that information; her student I.D. "That's the only form of identification she had on her."

"Yuumura Kirika..." House dictated with a flawless accent. He skimmed over some of the other information, but most of it was either useless or a part of the language he just didn't know.

"So this Miss Kirika is-" Chase found himself interrupted.

"Miss Yumura, or Kirika, I'm sure she'd prefer." After a confused look, the only fluent doctor elaborated. "Their names go backwards in Japan."

* * *

Light filled her vision. It was strong, probably caused by a fluorescent bulb. Where was she? What had happened? This feeling...it reminded her of that day when she had first awoken remembering nothing at all...

It frightened her.

Kirika tried to sit up, but her muscles weren't listening as well as she had hoped. That was very strange considering the amount of time and effort she had put into honing them. After a few minutes of adjusting as best as she could, the young girl started noticing more and more about her surroundings.

First of all, she was in a hospital bed. Had she messed up the last job? Surely not. Yet, here she was, recovering as it were from some unknown incident. She didn't feel very well rested, which was odd considering how long she must have been sleeping. The clock in the room told her it had been quite a few hours since she had last checked it in the...

That's where she was! The office building! She had messed up. Marco had gotten away. It was the last thing she remembered before everything had gone dark. What on earth had happened to her? She would not have a lot of time to contemplate this alone, however, as a number of footsteps had stopped outside her door. Naturally, her trained hearing could easily detect the minute differences in paces and footfalls. Presumably, the ones about to enter were medical practitioners of some form or another, but Kirika knew better than to let her guard down at any time. In the event that the ones who would enter were there for her life, she could think of at least ten different ways off the top of her head anything in this room could become a makeshift weapon.

Much to her relief, the first few to enter were dressed in clothing typical of those in the medical profession, though the fourth in still had her on alert.

"I see our little rising sun is awake." He had a limp. The man would probably not be much of a threat even if he was somehow in the assassination business. Still...with Les Soldats you never really knew. One of the doctors approached her with a friendly demeanor. Kirika wasn't quite ready to be examined before she had her grasp of the situation, but it probably wouldn't do to start a ruckus either.

She began in a quiet voice; it could almost be mistaken for the wind, but she raised it so as to be heard. "Could you tell what I'm doing here?"

"We were hoping you might be able to help us figure that out." He paused for a moment after noticing something. "Your English is surprisingly good for someone who attends school in Japan." It wasn't an overly suspicious note; in all appearances, she was a foreigner on vacation. Yet her accent was flawless, as if she had spoken the language as her first. The young girl had reacted to his statement, and only House caught the subtle emotion – or lack thereof – on her features. Interesting.

* * *

"Alright minions, let er' rip." He whipped out his trusty marker and wrote down a number of symptoms. Many of these clearly fit a certain auto-immune disease, but nobody would even try to submit that idea.

After their patient had woken up, the team had done their best with an examination and medical history, but there was virtually nothing in regards to the latter. That would be a problem, but hopefully not an insurmountable obstacle. The girl was reasonably forthcoming with how she was feeling, willing to provide any information necessary to shorten her stay.

The list of possible ailments was getting progressively shorter, as they narrowed down their field of searching. Almost an hour later, the witty lead of Diagnostics would have to break the silence. "Really? Nothing else?" Met with blank stares he relented.

"It's Lupus!"

* * *

Right then, so after getting a number of Story Alerts in my email I've decided to take a crack at this for another chapter. It's a little short, but I feel like adding too much too soon would break the flow.

As I mentioned previously, I will be avoiding medical jargon like the plague. It has its place in the show, but unfortunately, not in this work of fanfiction. To make up for it, I will mostly be focusing on the implications of the diagnoses.

Finally, any constructive criticism would be welcome; my story writing skills are rather undeveloped, and any helpful advice can go a long way.


End file.
